Choo choos

My son LOVES vehicles of all sorts--cars, boats, big rigs, construction vehicles, buses, motorhomes, the list goes on & on & on, BUT his absolute favorite has to be the choo choo train.  There is just something about trains that REALLY excites him.  Thankfully we live close to a train track & he gets to see trains up close & personal on a very regular basis.  Before you assume that the reason he loves trains that much is simply because he lives so close to them I can assure you that we also live in a zone of perpetual construction & while he does love construction vehicles--"orange trucks" is the generic name he has given those--they still don't match trains.  

Because he loves them so much I am always on the lookout for train related stuff going on.  On Facebook I am now following tons of homeschooling & fieldtripping pages & groups.  And somewhere on one of them I saw that there was some sort of train related thing going on at the fairgrounds last weekend.  I didn't know details & didn't know how much it would cost, but we went & asked at the gate.  It was totally free, not even a parking fee, which I've never seen before.  And it ended up being actual original steam trains that they are planning to restore & actually have running within the next 5 years.  Some were open where you could go inside, but some you could only view from the outside.  There was a magnificent passenger car from the 1800s, but we couldn't go inside.  It was hard to view from outside as well, but we could see the curtains, there were seats & beds, etc.  It looked like something out of an old western movie. 

All in all it was amazing & my son LOVED every moment of it.  He loved the caboose the best of all.  I cannot believe how MASSIVE & LONG the engines were back in the 1800s!!  I've never seen anything like it before.